Communities of Practice - Task 1

I was interested in may things especially when i was younger and therefore could be considered to have been part of many "communities of practice" according to Lave and Wengers ideas. I was part of a swimming club community, theatre production community aswell as a singing and dance school. What Lave and Wenger stress is that even by just livng we become part of these communities of practice and that it is this that helps us to create friendship, memories and communicate with people with common interests.

This is how i believe many of our friendships and relationships are created. During my school days I was part of a singing community within my school where we would have singing lessons twice a week individually and altogether once a week for a whole afternoon. The whole process was to help lead us up to completing our graded singing exams. By including group sessions this helped build up confidence so that when I would enter the exam room I wouldnt be put off if there were more people than just my singing teacher present. Although this was the main objective of doing such a group task , the people who I sang with became my friends and we built relationships as we had this common hobby which we were interested in and we enjoyed reaching our goal of completeing our exam as we were all able to help each other.

We all joined at the same time as it was a yearly switch over which meant you had to take part for the full year, therefore there were no newcomers and all of us were therefore on equal footing allowing even stronger relationships to be produced.This process also allowed us to realise how our piers can help, especially if they have the experience in the community which you are interested in. This shows a sense of hierarchy which is common within these communities of practice especially when related to particular organisations where managers have a workforce to look after, etc. Although this isnt necessarily what wenger is saying as he is talking about small groups of individuals with common interests which is more like how i was part of a singing community. Im glad i became part of a particular community of practice as it provided me with alot more confidence, built realtionships which i still have to this day and most importantly I passed my singing exam with flying colours!!!!

We could also say that being here at university is part of a community of practice as we are all here to complete the ultimate goal of achieving a degree. There is a hierachy systems of the lecturers being knowledgable and therefore allowing us to learn as much as possible. This also shows that these communities dont necessarily have to be as small as wenger has pointed out although within the university there are also many smaller groups of people who will be interested in more personal topics (i.e a student who is part of the university community will also be part of the media community if thats what they study, etc).